Entry

I'm new to Python and would appreciate advice on what book(s) I should be looking at?

Oct 28th, 2008 18:53
Scott Mandarich, Chris Burkhardt, Joe Bloggs, Sheila King, unknown unknown,

There a lots,

Go to http://www.python.org/psa/bookstore/

for a list.  The manning and oreilly books have sample chapters online 
you could look at.

A range of books that should be useful when starting out with Python:

- "Quick Python" by Harms, and McDonald.

- If you already program, David Beasly's "Python Essential Reference" 
is 
very good. Another plus is that the book is high quality. It covers 
1.5.2, is tight fast text with no little fluffy animal or snakes 
writhing through the text, just down to the bone reading.

Snoopy :-)) wrote:

If you are New to Programming, then In addition to the Tutorials found 
on Python's Home Page, you should get as the 1st. choice "Teach 
Yourself 
Python in 24hrs".

BTY: "Learning Python" is also a very good book, but as a Newbie I 
found 
it quite overwhelming, to the point that I almost stopped learning 
Python. On the other hand I am very happy that I bought the "Teach 
Yourself Python in 24hrs". I find it considerable easier to comprehend 
the concepts, etc.

You can read the book online at the following:
                        http://www.pauahtun.org/TYPython/

Paul Winkler wrote:

OTOH, I got "Learning Python" and I've found that after reading just
the first half of the book and doing maybe 1/4 of the exercises, I
had a very good grasp of the language, including classes and
exceptions (both new ideas to me). From there the next step is to
skim the second half looking for useful bits, or poke around in the
library reference manual.

But then, it did take more than 24 hours. :)

[Alessandro Bottoni]
        I LOVE this book: 
        "Learning Python" by Mark Lutz and David Ascher
        Published by O'Reilly
        ISBN 1565924649
        It is concise, exhaustive, clean and well-organized.

> How about a book about Python and XML?
 
        [Alessandro Bottoni]
        There is just one, and it is quite good: 
        "XML processing with Python"
        By Sean McGrath
        Published by Prentice-Hall
        ISBN 013211192

> How about a book about Python for web site development?

        [Alessandro Bottoni]
        Unfortunately, the only existing book on this topic is out of 
print:
        "Internet Programming with Python"
        By Aaron Watters and James Ahlstrom
        Published by M&T Books
        ISBN 1558514848

        If you are working on Windows, buy this book:
        "Python Programming on Win32"
        By Mark Hammond and Andy Robinson
        Published by O'Reilly
        ISBN 1565926218

        If you have to develop GUIs, buy this book:
        "Python and Tkinter programming"
        By John Grayson
        Published by Manning
        ISBN 1884777813

I, Sheila King, would like to add a recent update to this FAQ:

You might try this newly released book:

"Core Python Programming"
by Wesley J. Chun
published by Prentice Hall
ISBN 0130260363

I've recently acquired it and found it to be quite helpful. It
has also received a number of positive comments from others in
the comp.lang.python newsgroup.











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